The Spiral Garden System: A Self-Sufficient Urban Garden

I've seen some incredible urban garden systems created by true visionaries, but I've never seen something quite like this. The Spiral Garden System is designed to inspire sustainability and to serve as a visual reminder of how close we can be to our own food systems. Thought up by a group of Spanish designers, the system is designed to be completely self-sufficient. Learn how after the jump!

Acting as a hub for sustainability, the garden system is designed to be self-sufficient in its resource input while also providing a place for community and even bike storage! Their goal was to design something for a city that values the environment just as much as other aspects of city life. The spiral design embraces resource recycling, so water can trickle through the system over time. It is an urban take on a shared garden, similar to a CSA, where the neighbors voluntarily participate to tend to the plants. The spiral garden system won its designers Saida Salmau, Anna Julibert, and Carmen Vilar second place in the Iida Awards of 2010.

I love the exterior of mesh, which helps share the vegetation with the rest of city dwellers in the most unexpected places. As for the food production, I'd like to learn more. Since air pollution can be quite high in some cities, I want to learn about its capabilities to help clean the air and still produce healthy food. We'll just have to wait to see if the idea is picked up by a visionary city, though.

What do you think? Would you want this in city centers like New York's Times Square?